tangled
by Ruaki
Summary: Ficlet. RikuSora. Sometimes the red thread can be a noose. Love is not beautiful.


ffn apparently ate my formating and no one told me. Reuploaded with this corrected.

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You sometimes don't realize the power you have. The person next to you, have you ever wondered what they think? Perhaps you know. Perhaps you think you know. But can you state, amp by amp, the power that person has over you? (Like the roaring of thunder.)

It hurts. The power he has over me hurts, this terrible red thread (oh fate and destiny and love and hate and such terrible, wonderful things). It wraps around my neck, biting deep with snake fangs, drinking my life's river like honey. He doesn't know, he doesn't realize. But still he tugs harder, jerking the line tight, decapitating me with playful words and familiar touches.

Sometimes I want to laugh with him, even if the pain is killing me. Sometimes I want to hold him, as if he were a drug that could dull the senses (smelling of salt and sand and sweat). Sometimes I want to fuck him senseless, violence for violence, burying myself so deep in him that my pain would be his.

There are days where I wake up, telling myself that this is the day. The day where I end the pain and sever the thread. I would meet him as I always do and he will laugh and maybe hug me (breathless, scratchy voice not yet touched by maturity crying my name with delight). And then I'll tell him.

I hate you, I would say, with cold eyes and twisted smile. I never liked you. A groupie, a hang around. Screw up. Good for nothing klutz. And my heart would crumble and my soul would die, but at least I would be free from the neverending agony.

His face would falter. Maybe he would cry. Maybe he wouldn't react at all except for a quiet why, large soulful eyes (as blue as the sky but never as empty) watching me with undisguised hurt. And I would saw at the line harder, hearing the minute twings as the thread severed fiber by fiber, poison spilling from my mouth in a cataract. He would know my suffering, my anguish, every little bit of torture I had gone through during my entire existence in his horrible power.

But I never can do it. Today, he laughs and hugs me (breathless, scratchy voice not yet touched by maturity crying my name with delight) and then he smiles. That cursed, thrice-damned smile. It lifts my heart on blood-stained wings away from the hell of my soul and the pain would be gone for that second of a second. Sheer, unadulterated worship would wash in on lolling waves to mask the hurt, and I would find myself smiling back (cracking the porcelain face). I will tell him tomorrow, I reassure myself, as I am pulled along to join him on the shore. Even though the pain is back now, I will wait for tomorrow and then I will tell him how much he hurts me and how much I hate him for it.

No doubt he would never understand what I feel. No doubt he could never reciprocate the pain, no doubt he would never let me have some of his power. Either because I am a boy or his best friend (oh irony! oh sickness! what sort of fool wants the person he spends every moment of his life with, every thought, every memory?) or because he has no interest in such things, content to chase crabs along the beach than to know the dirty secrets adults would breath into each other behind closed doors. Like the wind, he fluttered this way and that, thrown by the currents of his whims, while I remained anchored behind, forgotten in lieu of more exotic lands.

He smiles at me, drawing me in, a friendly arm thrown around my neck. Little things. Little things like this, normally shared between close friends, mentally warped by my perverseness. Amore (forever yours), agape (faithfully yours), eros (make me yours), so many different words for the different emotions his presence excite in me. I want to fall down in worship, to beg forgiveness. Cleanse me! Take away my pain!

Guess what, he says loudly, face alight. It is not a beautiful face. It is not even pretty. It is a little more than ordinary, the boy-next-door, with a wide mouth and pert nose. Cheeks rounded by baby fat, speckled with sunburn and mud. An unkempt nest of hair, rarely combed, full of sand. Gangly arms, knobby knees, all limbs skinny and uncoordinated, as if an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle of leftover pieces. Guess what, he repeats again to gain my attention, come on, guess.

I make a guess (you have a crush on her). His face falters for a moment, and I know I am right. However much he may deny it himself, I knew it to be true, because the red thread (of pain) shivered in ectasy at its mention.

No, that's not it, he assures me after a hesitant moment, unaware of how many times that moment stabbed me. Want to try again? His arm tightens around my neck, a noose. (choke me, kill me, bury me in October roses)

I shrug, aware of the warm breath brushing my cheek with a butterfly's caress. (A kiss?) I grin, make a joke at his expense. His face crinkles, balling into a child's pout, and he tries to stomp on my foot. I move deftly aside, snapping the noose.

One hand is behind his back. I imagine him holding onto the crimson string, twirling it around his heavy fingers, tugging the line taunt. I stop not too far from him, afraid I'll strangle.

The pout faded, melting away like wax in the afternoon's humid heat. A smile is traced onto his blank features, the smile he uses only for me. There is nothing special about it. It did not light rooms or make me light-headed. It could not stop an army or make women swoon in lust. Just a slash on his face. Simple and clean.

Like a knife wound.

His hand meanders out from behind his back, holding out a glassy black rock. Volcanic obsidian?

His fingers stroke the surface, tilting it in the light, and a million green fires burn into my retina. I shield my face as the rock captures sunbeams with crystalline matches, igniting viridian sparks within.

Isn't it cool? He's happy. I found it on the beach, he continues, letting the gem dangle at the end of his fingertips. The inner flames undulate, writhing, begging to be freed. It is horrible, horrible, horribly beautiful.

It made me think, yanno, and he trails off, as if embarrassed, shy. His fingers snuff the light and the rock quickly disappears into one of his many pockets. He mumbles something, the gulls talking over him.

But the wind whispers loud. It made me think of your eyes.

He laughs then and runs up the beach, waving to me. Race you!

I am unsure of how to react, of what to think. The red line tugs me along and I follow lest it steals my breath. As much as I wanted to think otherwise (amore, agape, eros), his gesture had been nothing more than whim, fancy, affectionate in the way you were affectionate to your cat.

Pain blossoms anew in the cold depths of my heart, an ugly, malformed bud of seething rot. He darts off and I keep pace, breast to breast, nose to nose. He laughs, head tossing back, face flushed from heat and joy.

If I kill him, would I be free?

But I would cry and I would never forget, and I would forever be bound by my own sin.

(damned for eternity, tangled by fate)

If I kill myself, would I be free?

And he might cry but he would soon forget, and I would forever be bound by own sin.

(damned for eternity, tangled by fate)

I laugh with him. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will tell him.

(i love you)


End file.
